Conventional Scanning Near-Field Optical Microscope (SNOM or NSOM) probes are presently designed to move over the surface of the object being measured, maintaining a constant probe distance from a surface at the nanometer scale while scanning across the surface to obtain nanometer scale resolution images. Scanning near-field microscopy (SNOM) is an optical technique capable of resolving beyond the diffraction limit, where resolutions in the 20 nm range have been demonstrated. The SNOM technology has been applied to cells and to plasma membranes. The high-resolution imagery revealed detail of the cytoskeletal actin not obtainable by any other methods.
SNOM has achieved nano-resolution scales where single molecules have been studied. Near-field techniques circumvent the diffraction limit imposed on conventional light microscopes to obtain sub-wavelength spatial resolution. Currently SNOM instruments are not capable of penetrating into a living cell or imaging intracellular regions.
Needs exist for a system capable of collecting data from high-resolution imagery providing a unique imaging tool for the investigation of cells at the sub-cellular and molecular level.